Turn Customers into Brand Ambassadors

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Brand Ambassadors are people who use and talk about your brand in a positive and relatable way, preferably, in front of a large audience. No matter how fantastic your product or service might be it’s hard to promote without the help of awesome word of mouth recommendations that come from customers that sincerely love your brand.

With social media firmly grasping its way into everyone’s everyday life, that’s where you’ll find some of the largest and most engaged audience. Brand ambassadors can help build your business by building brand awareness with a much larger reach as social media has made larger audiences much more accessible.

What’s a Brand Ambassador and Why are They Important?

Brand Ambassadors are people who eat, sleep, and breathe your brand. They’re usually already loyal customers who know and love what you sell or the service you offer. They can also be customers who have been extremely pleased with the service they just received and want to share their experience with their social following and friends.

Traditionally, brand ambassadors were often celebrities who had large social clout and air time. Now, the makeup of brand ambassadors sits more firmly with the blogger or the social media guru who has cultivated a large and loyal following.

Through social media, brands have been getting the benefit of positive contributions from their fans and followers without even having a formal brand ambassador program or a plan to build one.

The way most people talk about their user experience has changed. Nowadays a customer who might have had a great experience can share it instantly with a potentially large social media following, which extends your brand awareness. In fact, millennials are much more likely to show their purchases to their friends on social media and write online reviews. Customers as a whole don’t trust brands but they do trust other customers. Passionate recommendations from a fellow customer will be taken far more seriously and then a message from the brand itself.

• People are talking about your brand whether you like it or not. So, you might as well utilize that word of mouth brand awareness and make brand ambassadors out of them.

• With Millennials more prone to talking about the products or services they buy on social media you want to direct the conversation in a positive manner.

• Reach a much larger and more diverse audience with the influence of brand ambassadors.

How to Find Brand Ambassadors

So we know that brand ambassadors are important but where are they and how do I find them? Well, it’s a lot more simple than you might expect. Hunt down people who love your brand or locate the people, your target market, that will love your and don’t know it yet.

• Looking within your own organization: Employees are a great place to start when trying to find the brand ambassadors for your product or service. They usually know the ins and outs of your brand already so they make great candidates.

• Turn to your customer base: Take a really good look at your customer base and pinpoint the most loyal ones. Your customers are the end users of your product so they’re probably the best people to talk about their experience. Among your customers, you’ll undoubtedly find those hardcore fans who not only are frequent users of your product but love to talk about it every chance they get.

Bloggers have a lot of power and usually, they know it. With a single post, an influential blogger can shape social media chatter and alter public opinion. This is exactly what you’re looking for when developing a brand ambassador program or looking to reach out and make connections.

How to Maintain and Feed Brand Ambassadors

Now that you have an idea of what a brand ambassador is and how to locate and reach out to them, you’ll need a strategy in place to feed your brand ambassador machine.

• Give them something to talk about: Whether it’s a sneak peak of a new product, a special deal that only they get, or an exclusive night, you have to give your brand ambassadors something to sink their teeth into. Without giving brand ambassadors anything special or exclusive to talk about they won’t be able to do much good for your brand.

• Use the content they produce: Nothing is more appealing to a social media guru or a blogging champ than when you actually use the content they produce. Maybe one of your brand ambassadors snapped a beautiful shot of product or service, use it in your next social media ad campaign (with the explicit permission of the user of course). That little nod from the brand goes a long way with a super fan.

A solid brand ambassador program starts with your most loyal customers and your employees. They know your brand message the best and can share it with a much larger and engaged audience that you alone couldn’t reach.

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